Re: Postgres 8.3.x upgrade

On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 7:50 AM, Jessica Richard <rjessil(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
> We are going to upgrade our Postgres servers (most 8.2.9 and some 8.2.4) to
> the 8.3.x version.
>
> From the postgres web site, I can see the 8.3.5 is the latest version.
>
> Question for people who have been on 8.3.5:
>
> Is 8.3.5 very safe to use (no major new bugs)? Is it really better than the
> older versions of the 8.3.X families?

We've been running it in production since last fall and 8.3.x is a
very stable and very fast branch. We had about ten or so queries that
failed due to bad casting, that we fixed in about a day. Upgrading
postgres, even counting these small issues, is one of the least
painful upgrades I've ever done.

As for 8.3.x with x being 0 through 5 right now, the newer versions
are bug and security fixes only over 8.3.0. You want those bug fixes,
and running an older update version (i.e. 8.3.1) versus the latest
(i.e. 8.3.5) is rarely a good idea.

Unlike some database products which are known to ship later versions
that break things (**cough** MySQL **cough**) the postgresql hackers
are VERY picky about what goes into a point update.

**cough** (see http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=31001 )